CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY
Crisis and Opportunity May Day Brings A Challenge to the Workers By Joseph W. Sharts (Member, National Excutive Committee of tbe Socialist Party) \«AY Day comes this year to America like the...
...Assessments multiply...
...It must make good or get out...
...To think so would be to brand us with tbe mark of racial inferiority...
...they are banded together to capture the lucrative privilege of collecting and disbursing the public funds.' When one succeeds it Is an army of occupation as literally as the French ! forces in tbe Ruhr district...
...There Is no such excuse as that ths other party controls part of tbe government...
...Why Is it that along among the nations the United States—excepting Reading and Milwaukee—shows little or none of that inspiring workingclass reach for power...
...Taxes are climbing...
...It is only through the power of organized labor that we will be able to reduce the hours of labor and improve working conditions...
...America is run by obscure committees of Congress and of the various State legis latum...
...Cities are strangled by rural legislatures...
...Comrade Leon shows it too, by bis consistent support...
...Unemployment, debt, economic insecurity, dog the heels of American workers more ruthlessly than in other lands...
...When it crashes to the ground our ladder by which we are trying to mount to political power will have been thrown from under us...
...Their hope that Hoover may show himself such, a Duce as tbe omniscient Benito is almost comical...
...The New Leader is the only weekly labor paper in New York that will guide you and educate you to better your conditions along economic and political lines...
...Deliberation and public debate have disappeared • • • Efficiency and , economy are as impossible in such a disjointed haphazard system as sugar corn hi tbe Gobi desert...
...Crisis and Opportunity May Day Brings A Challenge to the Workers By Joseph W. Sharts (Member, National Excutive Committee of tbe Socialist Party) \«AY Day comes this year to America like the crash of raUying trumpet music before dawn soudlng in the ears of a drugged and drunken crowd asleep in a blind pig...
...In despair of political relief our business men are ogling Mussolini and sending up more or less audible prayers for tbe rise of a similar dictator in the United States...
...The New Leader is one of the great factors in educating the workers along economic and political lines...
...Cigarmakers Chief Greets The New Leader By Jack Melhado (Secretary, Cigarmakers Joint ^ Advisory Board) 'J'HE workers who have left the labor movement are gradually returning to the unions of their trade...
...There will be grunts, one or two win ait up, but for tbe most part the sleepers will sleep on...
...Everybody Instinctively recognizes that vigorous effective political action is out of the question...
...They would overthrow the present system in a week if they thought they bad something better...
...A single coordinated government with centralised HBiMMtMlH) must be found...
...I say to you, fellow workers, wake up and Join the unions of your respective trades...
...Tbe party In power controls all branches of government...
...Tbe great: political parties no longer make more than a faint pretense of being united, for principle...
...It is impossible that we alone among the races of men are congenitally blind and deaf to the call of workingclass emancipation...
...Old age pensions, unemployment doles, amenities which in other countries have long ago been- conceded as a matter of course, are refused here...
...I have come to tha belief tha onlj escape from this vicious labyrinth tea complete renovation of tha .American governmental system, Tha 48 separate suite of political clothing must ha discarded...
...The courts have practically outlawed labor unions for all militant purposes...
...Yet we are of the same blood, descended from the selfsame workin smen who are laying their hands today in England upon the sceptre of political power, in Germany have won the premiership for their representative, in Vienna, Copenhagen, and a thousand cities, are holding the City Hall as masters instead of standing outside the door as beggars, hat in hand...
...Politics therefore has become a gamble for office and the privilege of plunder...
...The British' voter at least knows whom to blame for a law that hurts him...
...Strikers may not even safety damn at a distance tbe injunction which forbids their meeting together in a ban...
...Our brothers in Europe and around the world, even in old China, will march and sing together in grand and inspiring demonstrations under red banners of world - peace, world - cooperation, and world- brotherhood What makes us so muddy-mettled ? The peculiar apathy of the exploited masses of the United States, their peculiar inability to unite oo an effective program of policial and Industrial action, or even to get together for consideration of such matters, must be traced to some peculias cause...
...The famous "checks and balances" by which our cautious 18th century governmentmakers sought to protect us against a Caesar or powerful central bureaucracy, have worked out into a form of "Oommitteeism...
...The central idea of tbe British system—absolute authority of Parliament and absolute control by*-the party with tha parliamentary Iroralug maJurUj —appeals to me...
...Political democracy Is in danger of sudden assassination by our ruling classes...
...A dual arrangement—National and States—gives us in reality 40 intersecting, overlapping, and semi-duplicating governments more or less Independent of one another: It is like 49 suits of political clothing...
...All forward movement is in fact practically paralyzed...
...Our legislatures have really disintegrated into standing committees...
...list's call for a new deal with a new deck, • a • Public sentiment Is amazingly ripe for such a proposal...
...The present May Day may serve, I hope, as a means of arousing our comrades to the great crisis and the great opportunity of the hour...
...I should Uke to sea tbe Socialists of the United States nmphif-«* for the next few years that plank of our last national platform which calls for a constitutional convention...
...To save political democracy is as urgent upon us as to capture industrial democracy...
...The United States has acquired tbe most confusing, complicated, uncoordinated political machinery on earth...
...One of the great factors responsible for this return is the new era of the machine which is eliminating manual labor...
...My heart is with the wonderful paper, T$e New Leader," says E Leon, of Los Aageles...
...Certainly it Is not that the American masses are contented...
...I believe the explanation, is found in our peculiar system of government...
...The American Federation of Labor welcomes all workers to Its fold to fight the fight of labor...
Vol. 8 • April 1929 • No. 15
